Things got goin back in 2009 at the SVIT in San Jose, CA. I just finished my Intern year of Residency (the day before was a 24hr ICU call) so had a few days off to tri something new.
I spent a few hours in the pool the week prior, did one open water swim after renting a wetsuit, watched a bunch of "Total Immersion" swim videos on YouTube in the on-call room between answering nurse's pages about tube feeds and the occasional crashing patient. Might get through this thing, I thought... Residency... fingers crossed.
The biking thing not that worried. Grew up mountain biking with my dad through the Appalachians NJ and got into the road scene at Georgetown where a buddy worked for a bike shop down on M street and was able to get me a good deal on a bright yellow compact frame Giant.
Running. I hated running. It was a means to an end. Anything over a mile left me a chaffed mess. Things changed when I met my wife MD, former collegiate runner at Georgetown. To spend more time together I tried to keep up with her on runs. Didn't work out so well until she introduced me to the single thing that has allowed me to run more than the 360+ feet around the baseball diamond... Bodyglide. No more raw thighs.
Race day came and boom!
HOOKED!
I distinctly remember seeing a "64" (his age) on the back of some dude's calve as he burned by me on the run and thought WTF! Being a former collegiate athlete in baseball (ok not very useful in tris or anything else for that matter) and ice hockey, I thought, "I can do this".
People that know me well know that I simply don't try something out... I go fricking apeshit crazy full throttle ahead.
So there it began.
